White maple buds partly opened

March 7. 

Frost this morning, though completely overcast. 3 P.M. — 34º. 

A little sleety snow falling all day, which does not quite cover the ground, — a sugaring. 

Song sparrow heard through it; not bluebird. 

White maple buds partly opened, so as to admit light to the stamens, some of them, yesterday at least. 

C. says that he saw a swarm of very small gnats in the air yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 7, 1860

Song sparrow heard. See January 28, 1857 ("See a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard."); also note to March 5, 1860 ("the song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts")

White maple buds partly opened. See March 14, 1857 ("White maple buds . . .have now a minute orifice at the apex, through which you can even see the anthers.”); March 17, 1855 ("White maple blossom-buds look as if bursting; show a rusty, fusty space.") March 23, 1853 (“The white maple . . . has opened unexpectedly, and a rich sight it is, looking up through the expanded buds to the sky.”); March 25, 1854 ("White maple buds bursting, making trees look like some fruit trees with blossom-buds.")

A swarm of very small gnats in the air. See March 20, 1858 (" It cheers me more to behold the swarms of gnats which have revived in the spring sun.") See also A Book of the Seasons: Fuzzy Gnats

I do not know at first what it is that charms me

March 27. 

There is no snow now visible from my window except on the heel of a bank in the swallow hole behind Dennis’s. A sunny day, but rather cold air.

8.30 A. M. — Up Assabet in boat. 

At last I push myself gently through the smooth and sunny water, sheltered by the Island woods and hill, where I listen for birds, etc. There I may expect to hear a woodpecker tapping the rotten aspen tree. There I pause to hear the faint voice of some early bird amid the twigs of the still wood-side. You are pretty sure to hear a woodpecker early in the morning over these still waters. 

But now chiefly there comes borne on the breeze the tinkle of the song sparrow along the river side, and I push out into wind and current. 

Leave the boat and run down to the white maples by the bridge. The white maple is well out with its pale [?] stamens on the southward boughs, and probably began about the 24th. That would be about fifteen days earlier than last year. 

I find a very regular elliptical rolled stone in the freshly (last fall) plowed low ground there, evidently brought from some pond‘or seaside. It is about seven inches long. The Indians prized such a stone, and I have found many of them where they haunted. Commonly one or both ends will be worn, showing that they have used it as a pestle or hammer. 

As I go up the Assabet, I see two Emys insculpta on the bank in the sun, and one picta. They are all rather sluggish, and I can paddle up and take them up. 

Found on the edge of Dodge’s Brook, about midway, in the cedar field, what I did not hesitate to regard as an Emys insculpta, but thickly spotted with rusty-yellowish spots on the scales above, and the back was singularly depressed. Was it a variety? It looked like a very old turtle, though not unusually large; the shell worn pretty smooth beneath. I could count more than thirty striae above. When it dropped into the brook, I saw that the rusty-yellow spots served admirably to conceal it, for while the shell was bronze-colored (for a ground work), the rusty-yellow spots were the color of the sandy and pebbly bottom of the brook. It was very differently shaped from the shell I have, and Storer does not mention yellow spots. 

Hear a lark in that meadow. Twitters over it on quivering wing and awakes the slumbering life of the meadow. 

The turtle and frog peep stealthily out and see the first lark go over. 

Farmer was plowing a level pasture, unplowed for fourteen years, but in some places the frost was not quite out. Farmer says that he heard geese go over two or three nights ago. 

I would fain make two reports in my Journal, first the incidents and observations of to-day; and by tomorrow I review the same and record what was omitted before, which will often be the most significant and poetic part. 

I do not know at first what it is that charms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory. 

I saw quail-tracks some two months ago, much like smaller partridge-tracks. 

Farmer describes a singular track in the snow the past winter from near his house to Annursnack. Traced it in all five or six miles to a hemlock on the west side, and there he lost it. It travelled like a mink; made a track with all its four feet together, about as big as that of a horse’s foot, eighteen inches apart more or less. Wondered if it was a pine marten.

Men talk to me about society as if I had none and they had some, as if it were only to be got by going to the sociable or to Boston.

Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply, for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction.

Pickerel begin to dart in shallows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 27, 1857

I would fain make two reports in my Journal,. . . The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory. See notes to March 24, 1857 ("If you are describing any occurrence, or a man, make two or more distinct reports at different times.");  and March 28, 1857 ("Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent, and I may safely record all that I remember.")

Pickerel begin to dart in shallows. See  March 22, 1860 ("Pickerel begin to dart in shallows. ");  March 30, 1855  ("The pickerel begin to dart from the shallowest parts not frozen. "); Apri 1, 1858 ("Far up in still shallows, disturb pickerel and perch, etc. They apparently touch the muddy bottom as they dart out, muddying the water here and there."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

There is no snow now

visible from my window –

A cold sunny day.

now chiefly comes

borne on the breeze the tinkle

of the song sparrow 

The few signs of spring are more reliable.

March 14. 

A warmer day at last. 

It has been steadily cold and windy, with repeated light snows, since February 26th came in. This afternoon is comparatively warm, and the few signs of spring are more reliable. 

I go down the bank of the river in the Great Meadows. Many of those small, slender insects, with long, narrow wings (some apparently of same species without), are crawling about in the sun on the snow and bark of trees, etc. 

The maples, apple trees, etc., have been barked by the ice, and show light-colored bands one or two feet from the ground about their trunks. I find on examination that in these cases the bark has not been worn off by the floating ice rubbing against them, as happens when they are directly on the edge of the stream, for this light and barked surface occurs often when the trunk is surrounded by a hedge of sprouts or of other twigs only six inches distant, which show no marks of attrition; and the inner or true bark of the tree is not injured, only the thick epidermis or scaly outer bark has been detached, though that may have been very firmly attached to the trunk. 

The ice has evidently frozen to this, and when the water fell, has taken it off with itself; but the smaller twigs appear to have been and recovered again. Tough outer scales, which you could not possibly detach nor begin to detach with your hands, will be taken off quite clean, leaving exposed the yellowish surface of the inner bark. 

I see that some white maple buds apparently opened a little in that warm spell before the 26th of February, for such have now a minute orifice at the apex, through which you can even see the anthers.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, March 14, 1857

White maple buds . . .have now a minute orifice at the apex, through which you can even see the anthers. See March 17, 1855 ("White maple blossom-buds look as if bursting . . .”); March 31, 1856 ("I see the scarlet tops of white maples nearly a mile off, down the river, the lusty shoots of last year.")

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like.

May 4. 

P. M. — To Cedar Swamp via Assabet. 

Among others, I see republican swallows flying over river at Island. Again I see, as on the 30th of April, swallows flying low over Hosmer’s meadow, over water. though comparatively few. About a foot above the water, about my boat, are many of those little fuzzy gnats, and I suspect that it is these they are attracted by. 

(On the 6th, our house being just painted, the paint is peppered with the myriads of the same insects which have stuck to it. They are of various sizes, though all small, and there are a few shad-flies also caught. They are particularly thick on the coping under the eaves, where they look as if they had been dusted on, and dense swarms of them are hovering within a foot. Paint a house now, and these are the insects you catch. I suspect it is these fuzzy gnats that the swallows of the 30th were catching.) 

The river is gone down so much — though checked by the rain of the 2d and 3d — that I now observe the tortoises on the bottom, a sternothaerus among them. 

Hear the something like has twe twe twe twé, ter té te twe twe of the myrtle-bird, and see the bird on the swamp white oaks by Island. 

The aspen there just begun to leaf; not quite the white maple. 

I observe that the river meadows, especially Hosmer’s, are divided by two or more ridges and valleys (the latter alone now covered with water and so revealed), parallel with the river. The same phenomenon, but less remarkable, on the Wheeler meadow. Are they the traces of old river-banks, or where, in freshets, the current of the river meets the meadow current, and the sediment is deposited? 

See a peetweet on Dove Rock, which just peeps out. As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and skimming away from me. 

Having fastened my boat at the maple, met, on the bank just above, Luke Dodge, whom I met in a boat fishing up that way once or twice last summer and previous years. Was surprised to hear him say, “I am in my eighty-third year.” He still looks pretty strong and has a voice like a nutmeg-grater. Within two or three years at most, I have seen him walking, with that remarkable gait. It is encouraging to know that a man may fish and paddle in this river in his eighty-third year. 

He says he is older than Winn, though not the oldest man in the town. Mr. Tolman is in his eighty sixth year. 

Went up Dodge’s (an Englishman who once lived up it and no relation of the last-named) Brook and across Barrett’s dam. 

In the Cedar Swamp Andromeda calyculata abundantly out; how long? Viburnum nudum leafing. Smilacina trifolia recently up; will apparently open in ten or twelve days. 

At the dam, am amused with the various curves of jets of water which leak through at different heights. According to the pressure. For the most part a thin sheet was falling smoothly over the top and cutting short off some smaller jets from the first crack (or edge of the first plank), leaving them like white spikes seen through the water. The dam leaked in a hundred places between and under the planks, and there were as many jets of various size and curve. Reminds me of the tail-piece in Bewick, of landlord drawing beer(?) from two holes, and knowledge of artist shown. 

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like. Hear and see a goldfinch, on the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1856

The aspen there (the Island) just begun to leaf. . . . See  May 5, 1858  ("The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine pence suddenly");  May 17, 1860   ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me");  May 2, 1859 ("I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly"); May 2, 1855 ("The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed"). See also A Book of the Seasons, the Aspens. 

Went up Dodge’s Brook and across Barrett’s dam. See May 31, 1853 ("In the meanwhile, Farmer, who was hoeing, came up to the wall, and we fell into a talk about Dodge's Brook, which runs through his farm.  . . .")

Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like. See May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring

;

A remarkably cold, as well as snowy, January.

January 26

When I took the ether my consciousness amounted to this: I put my finger on myself in order to keep the place, otherwise I should never have returned to this world. 

They have cut and sawed off the butt of the great elm at nine and a half feet from the ground, and I counted the annual rings there with the greatest ease and accuracy. Indeed I never saw them so distinct on a large butt. The tree was quite sound there, not the least hollow even at the pith. 

There were one hundred and twenty—seven rings. Supposing the tree to have been five years old when nine and a half feet high, then it was one hundred and thirty-two years old, or came up in the year 1724, just before Lovewell’s Fight. 

There were two centres, fourteen inches apart. There were thirteen distinct rings about each centre, before they united and one ring inclosed both. Then there was a piece of bark,  say six or eight inches long. This was not overgrown but by the twenty—fourth ring. 

These two centres of growth corresponded in position to the two main branches six feet above, and I inferred that when the tree was about eighteen years old, the fork commenced at nine and a half feet from the ground, but as it increased in diameter, it united higher and higher up. 

I remember that the bark was considerably nearer one centre than the other. There was bark in several places completely overgrown and included on the extreme butt end where cut off, having apparently overgrown its own furrows. 

Its diameter, where I counted the rings, was, one way, as near as I could measure in spite of the carf, four feet and three inches; another, four feet and eight inches; and five feet. On the line by which I counted, which was the long way of the tree, it had grown in the first fifty years twenty inches, or two fifths of an inch a year; the last fifty, five and three quarters inches or about one ninth of an inch a year; and there was a space of about five inches between the two, or for the intermediate twenty-seven years.

At this height, it had grown on an average annually nearly twenty-four one-hundredths of an inch from the centre on one side. 

The white or sap wood averaged about two inches thick. The bark was from one to two inches thick, and in the last case I could count from twelve to fifteen distinct rings in it, as if it were regularly shed after that period. 

The court-house elm measured, at six feet from the ground on the west side, twelve feet one and one half inches in circumference. The willow by the Jim Jones house, fourteen feet at about eighteen inches from ground; thirteen feet eight inches, at about six inches from ground; and it bulged out much larger above this. 

P. M. —Walk down the river as far as the south bend behind Abner Buttrick’s. I also know its condition as far as the Hubbard Bridge in the other direction.

There is not a square foot open between these extremes, and, judging from what I know of the river beyond these limits, I may safely say that it is not open (the main stream, I mean) anywhere in the town. (Of the North Branch above the Bath Place, the goose ground, say to the stone bridge, I cannot speak confidently?) The same must have been the case yesterday, since it was colder. Probably the same has been true of the river, excepting the small Space against Merrick’s below the Rock (now closed), since January 7th, when it closed at the Hubbard Bath, or nearly three weeks, —a long time, methinks, for it to be frozen so solidly. 

A sleigh might safely be driven now from Carlisle Bridge to the Sudbury meadows on the river.

Methinks it is a remarkably cold, as well as snowy, January, for we have had good sleighing ever since the 26th of December and no thaw. 

Walk as far as Flint’s Bridge with Abel Hunt, where I take to the river. I tell him I have come to walk on the river as the best place, for the snow has drifted somewhat in the road, while it was converted into ice almost entirely on the river. 

“But,” asks he, “are you not afraid that you will get in?” 

“Oh, no, it will bear a load of wood from one end to the other.” 

"But then there may be some weak places.” 

Yet he is some seventy years old and was born and bred immediately on its banks. Truly one half the world does not know how the other half lives.  

Men have been talking now for a week at the post office about the age of the great elm, as a matter interesting but impossible to be determined. The very choppers and travellers have stood upon its prostrate trunk and speculated upon its age, as if it were a profound mystery. I stooped and read its years to them (127 at nine and a half feet), but they heard me as the wind that once sighed through its branches. They still surmised that it might be two hundred years old, but they never stooped to read the inscription. 

Truly they love darkness rather than light. One said it was probably one hundred and fifty, for he had heard somebody say that for fifty years the elm grew, for fifty it stood still, and for fifty it was dying. (Wonder what portion of his career he stood still!) 

Truly all men are not men of science. They dwell within an integument of prejudice thicker than the bark of the cork tree, but it is valuable chiefly to stop bottles with. Tied to their buoyant prejudices, they keep themselves afloat when honest swimmers sink.

The white maple buds look large, with bursting downy scales as in spring. 

I observe that the crust is strongest over meadows, though the snow is deep there and there is no ice nor water beneath, but in pastures and upland generally I break through. Probably there is more moisture to be frozen in the former places, and the snow is more compact.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1856

When I took the ether ... See May 12, 1851

In the course of ages the rivers wriggle in their beds, till it feels comfortable

March 24

P. M. — Up Assabet by boat. 

A cold and blustering afternoon after a flurry of snow which has not fairly whitened the ground. 

I see a painted tortoise at the bottom moving slowly over the meadow. They do not yet put their heads out, but merely begin to venture forth into their calmer element. It is almost as stationary, as inert, as the pads as yet. 

Passing up the Assabet, by the Hemlocks, where there has been a slide and some rocks have slid down into the river, I think I see how rocks come to be found in the midst of rivers. 

Rivers are continually changing their channels, -eating into one bank and adding their sediment to the other, - so that frequently where there is a great bend you see a high and steep bank or bill on one side, which the river washes, and a broad meadow on the other. 

As the river eats into the hill, especially in freshets, it undermines the rocks, large and small, and they slide down, alone or with the sand and soil, to the water’s edge. The river continues to eat into the hill, carrying away all the lighter parts of the sand and soil, to add to its meadows or islands somewhere, but leaves the rocks where they rested, and thus in course of time they occupy the middle of the stream and, later still, the middle of the meadow, perchance, though it may be buried under the mud.

But this does not explain how so many rocks lying in streams have been split in the direction of the current. Again, rivers appear to have traveled back and worn into the meadows of their creating, and then they become more meandering than ever. Thus in the course of ages the rivers wriggle in their beds, till it feels comfortable under them. 

Time is cheap and rather insignificant.

It matters not whether it is a river which changes from side to side in a geological period or an eel that wriggles past in an instant. 

The scales of alders which have been broken by the ice and are lying in the water are now visibly loosened, as you look endwise at the catkins, and the catkins are much lengthened and enlarged. The white maple buds, too, show some further expansion methinks.

The last four days, including this, have been very cold and blustering. 

The ice on the ponds, which was rapidly rotting, has somewhat hardened again, so that you make no impression on it as you walk. I crossed Fair Haven Pond yesterday, and could have crossed the channel there again. 

The wind has been for the most part northwesterly, but yesterday was strong southwesterly yet cold. The northwesterly comes from a snow—clad country still, and cannot but be chilling. 

We have had several flurries of snow, when we hoped it would snow in earnest and the weather be warmer for it. 

It is too cold to think of those signs of spring which I find recorded under this date last year. The earliest signs of spring in vegetation noticed thus far are the maple sap, the willow catkins, grass on south banks, and perhaps cowslip in sheltered places. Alder catkins loosened, and also white maple buds loosened. 

I am not sure that the osiers are decidedly brighter yet. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1855

A cold and blustering afternoon after a flurry of snow which has not fairly whitened the ground. See March 24, 1852 ("The night of the 24th, quite a deep snow covered the ground."); March 24, 1869 ("Cold and rather blustering again, with flurries of snow ")

The northwesterly comes from a snow—clad country still, and cannot but be chilling. See March 24, 1858 ("A cold north-by-west wind, which must have come over much snow and ice. ")

The earliest signs of spring in vegetation noticed thus far. See note to February 23, 1857 ("I have seen signs of the spring. I have seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he dimpled the surface as he leapt in. I have seen the brilliant spotted tortoises stirring at the bottom of ditches. I have seen the clear sap trickling from the red maple.”)

Signs of spring which I find recorded under this date last year. See March 24, 1854 ("Great flocks of hyemalis . . . ducks under Clamshell Hill . . . The elm buds . . . expanded . . .Goose Pond half open."); See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow; March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . . white maple and elm buds expand and open "); March 23, 1851 ("For a week past the elm buds have been swollen."); March 20, 1853 ("Goose Pond is wholly open.");March 21, 1855 ("Crossed Goose Pond on ice.")

I am not sure that the osiers are decidedly brighter yet. See February 24, 1855 ("You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them"); March 2, 1860 ("This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations,is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season"); March 14, 1856 ("They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year,. . . Yet I think that on a close inspection I should find no change. Nevertheless, it is, on the whole, perhaps the most springlike sight I have seen."); March 16, 1856 ("There is, at any rate, such a phenomenon as the willows shining in the spring sun, however it is to be accounted for."); March 22, 1854 ("C. thinks some willow osiers decidedly more yellow."); March 25, 1854 ("I am almost certain osiers have acquired a fresher color."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring

March 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 24

It is too cold to 

think of those signs of spring I

recorded  last year.

White maple blossom-buds look as if bursting.

March 17

H. Hosmer says he has seen black ducks. 

I hear the lesser redpolls yet. [the last]

See now along the edge of the river, the ice being gone, many fresh heaps of clam shells, which were opened by the musquash when the water was higher, about some tree where the ground rises. And very many places you see where they formed new burrows into the bank, the sand being pushed out into the stream about the entrance, which is still below water. 

March 17, 2022

White maple blossom-buds look as if bursting; show a rusty, fusty space, perhaps a sixteenth of an inch in width, over and above the regular six scales. 

I see scraps of the evergreen ranunculus along the riverside.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1855

H. Hosmer says he has seen black ducks. See March 13, 1859 ("Garfield says he saw black ducks yesterday."): March 21, 1854 ("Look with glass and find more than thirty black ducks asleep with their heads on their backs, motionless, and thin ice formed about them.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

I hear the lesser redpolls yet. [the last] See January 19, 1855 ("At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden. Almost all have more or less crimson; a few are very splendid, with their particularly bright crimson breasts. The white on the edge of their wing-coverts is very conspicuous.");  February 12, 1855 ("Under the birches, where the snow is covered with birch seeds and scales, I see the fine tracks, undoubtedly of linarias. The track of one of these birds in the light surface looks like a chain, or the ova of toads. Where a large flock has been feeding, the whole surface is scored over by them  "); March 12, 1855"Lesser redpolls still."); Compare  March 23, 1853 ("The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now, — the redpoll, Fringilla hyemalis, fox-colored sparrow, etc."); March 20, 1853 ("The redpolls are still numerous.'"); March 10, 1856 ("Probably the woods have been so generally buried by the snow this winter . . . I saw perhaps one redpoll in the town; that is all.");   March 6, 1860 ("The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

See now along the edge of the river, the ice being gone, many fresh heaps of clam shells, which were opened by the musquash. See November 11, 1855 (" The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off. "); December 23, 1858 ("How perfectly at home the musquash is on our river. And then there is an abundance of clams, a wholesome diet for him, to be had for the diving for them. I do not know that he has any competition in this chase, unless it is an occasional otter"); December 30, 1859 ("Even if the musquash is not there I often see the open clam shell on the edge of the ice, perfectly distinct a long way off, and he is betrayed"); January 3, 1860 ("Melvin thinks that the musquash eat more clams now than ever."); February 9, 1851 ("The last half of January was warm and thawy. The swift streams were open, and the muskrats were seen swimming and diving and bringing up clams, leaving their shells on the ice."); March 10, 1859 ("Here and there I see a musquash sitting in the sun on the edge of the ice, eating a clam, and the clamshells it has left are strewn along the edge. Ever and anon he drops into the liquid mirror, and soon reappears with another clam.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

White maple blossom-buds look as if bursting; show a rusty, fusty space. See March 7, 1860 ("White maple buds partly opened, so as to admit light to the stamens, some of them, yesterday at least."); March 14, 1857 ("White maple buds . . . have now a minute orifice at the apex, through which you can even see the anthers.”); March 23, 1853 (“The white maple . . . has opened unexpectedly, and a rich sight it is, looking up through the expanded buds to the sky.”); March 24, 1855 (" The white maple buds, too, show some further expansion methinks"); March 25, 1854 ("White maple buds bursting, making trees look like some fruit trees with blossom-buds.");  March 29, 1853 ("The female flowers of the white maple, crimson stigmas from the same rounded masses of buds with the male, are now quite abundant. . . . The two sorts of flowers are not only on the same tree and the same twig and sometimes in the same bud, but also sometimes in the same little cup.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

I see scraps of the evergreen ranunculus along the riverside.  See December 3, 1854 ("The ranunculus is still a fresh bright green at the bottom of the river. It is the evergreen of the river,")

March 17. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 17

Maple blossom-buds

show a rusty, fusty space –

look as if bursting.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White maple blossom-buds look as if bursting.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

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